Monday, December 19, 2011

Harvest Monday - December 19, 2011

We have been dining out a lot in the past couple of weeks and have more nights out coming up through the rest of the holidays so I've not been harvesting a lot of vegetables.

Here's the first harvest of celery root for the season. This weighed in at 1 pound., 10 ounces as seen below, but once I trimmed off the greens and the excess roots it only weighed 12 ounces. It was just the right size to use in a stew with lentils and spare ribs that I made up that night.

Diamante Celery Root

I used about half a pound of Lacinato kale to make a favorite snack of Kale Chips that we've not indulged in since one of my last harvests of kale in December of last year. I hope my Lacinato kale plants make it through the winter in better condition than the plants I grew last year, they stopped producing in late December and started to bolt in January. Last year I started my kale plants on June 24 and this year I waited until July 25 to sow the seeds so I'm hoping that the later start will help to keep them from bolting in January. Although, the problem last year may have been that the weather in January was unusually sunny, warm, and dry, plus my Lacinato kale plants were more stressed in the fall than they normally are. Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for better kale growing conditions for this season, we are looking forward to more chips and Kale Caesar salads and other favorite kale dishes. Hmm, perhaps I will have to sow some seeds after the solstice for an early spring planting of kale.

My only other significant harvest last week was of some lettuce that I used in a salad with julienned apple, Manchego cheese, thin sliced celery, Pomegranate arils, toasted hazelnuts and my favorite Meyer lemon-honey-mustard-olive oil vinaigrette.

Here's the harvest totals for the past week:

Piracicaba broccoli - 1.4 oz.
Diamante celery root - 12.2 oz.
Lacinato kale - 7.7 oz.
Buttercrunch lettuce - 18.8 oz.

The totals for the week were - 2 lb., 8.1 oz.
The totals for the year have been - 570 lb., .5 oz

It doesn't look like I will break the 600 pound mark this year, which is far off the 700 pound mark that I passed last year. I'm going to compare the harvests from last year and this year come January to see how the harvests differed. A quick look confirms my suspicion that my tomato and pepper harvests were significantly less than last year. It will be interesting to see where the rest of the difference comes from.

Harvest Monday is hosted by Daphne on her blog Daphne's Dandelions, head on over there to see what other garden bloggers have been harvesting lately.


8 comments:

  1. That's a nice looking and nice size celeriac. Mine did not do well this year, next year will be a better year.

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  2. The celery root is beautiful. Everyone seems to be especially busy with the holiday season the past few weeks and likely in the week or so ahead. We are no exception. Eating out a lot and snacking which means meals are more modest and not as regular of an affair at the moment.

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  3. I have never tried a Kale chip. Is it fried Kale? Will any variety do? I do like you celery root - is it the same things as celeraic?

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  4. Liz, the chips certainly are as crispy and flavorful as if they were fried, I suppose you could call them "oven-fried" kale chips. The celery root is the same as celeriac, that's just the name that is usually used here.

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  5. I hope my kale doesn't bolt early either. For me that would be in springtime, but still. Last year the kale kept fine and produced a good crop of leaves for the spring before bolting. I hope I do as well this year.

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  6. It's lucky that the holiday dining out time coincides with quite a low point in the garden, isn't it? Although I know you usually have year-round harvests. The celery root looks very good and I suppose you can eat the leaves too.

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  7. Celery Root, huh? I love that in French salads.

    Wondering if I could grow it in my snail-infested Oakland garden...

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